Three men aged 20 to 32 were sentenced Thursday in Créteil to three or four years in prison, for having participated in early August in an “orchestrated” attack on the police station in Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), targeted by mortars and Molotov cocktails.
All were placed under a warrant of committal, following their judgment in immediate appearance. One of them was sentenced by the Créteil court to four years’ imprisonment with a one-year suspended sentence.
Prosecutor Stéphane Hardouin had requested two to four years’ imprisonment with a warrant of committal, citing facts “of exceptional gravity” which could have caused “the death or infirmity” of the officials. According to the prosecution, messages on several discussion groups on the Snapchat application showed that “the attack on the police officers had been orchestrated by a group of individuals”.
“A mortar entered the passenger compartment of the vehicle”
Arrested Tuesday morning, the three men had been placed in police custody for aggravated violence. Mamadou D., born in 1989, had already been convicted 17 times, notably for acts of violence with a weapon, Mohamed B., born in 2001, twice for drug trafficking, while Waël A., born in 1994 and of Tunisian nationality, had no criminal record.
On the night of Sunday July 31 to Monday August 1, around one o’clock in the morning, people threw Molotov cocktails into the courtyard of the Vitry-sur-Seine police station where the police were and fired several dozen firework mortars in particular on a police vehicle in which the agents had taken refuge. The gate of the police station had also been “blocked” during the attack, the police said.
“A mortar entered the passenger compartment of the vehicle (and) set the seat on fire,” an injured police officer told investigators. Two civil servants suffered from tinnitus as a result of the attack and had been issued two and four days of ITT (temporary total incapacity for work).